You want news of a real weapon of mass
destruction? Try ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored in tanks in the tiny
town of West, Texas. At least 14 dead. Hundreds wounded. High school
and nursing home blitzed. Dozens of homes destroyed.

Boston and surrounding communities went through another night of terror and chaos
last night, with the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects allegedly rampaging
through the city just hours after their photos were released to the
public by authorities. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects, died
after apparently suffering multiple wounds from a police shootout and
what’s now believed to have been an explosion, but his brother, Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, 19, remains at large while a massive manhunt is underway.
Authorities are telling people in Boston and the surrounding area to
stay indoors as the manhunt continues.
Opponents of the city’s plan to lease its parking assets to the Port Authority gathered enough petitions
to put the issue on the ballot this November. The news comes as a huge
blow to local officials who supported the plan to help balance the
budget for the next two years and fund development projects around the city. Mayor Mark Mallory and City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. previously warned that without the parking plan the city will have to lay off cops and firefighters.
Before approving the budget bill in a 61-35 vote, the Ohio House voted to remove an amendment from the bill that would have banned comprehensive sex education in a 76-19 vote
yesterday, which CityBeat covered in further detail here. Still, the budget bill contains language that would defund Planned Parenthood
and redirect other funding to abstinence-only, anti-abortion crisis
pregnancy centers. The budget bill was also amended to ask for a
Medicaid waiver that give Ohio more time to mull over a Medicaid expansion and could lead to a revamp of the state-backed health care program. The budget bill must now be approved by the Ohio Senate and Gov. John Kasich.
Ohio’s unemployment rate was 7.1 percent in March,
unchanged from February’s revised rate and a small drop from 7.4
percent in March 2012. The number of people unemployed rose by 1,000,
while the amount of people employed dropped by 20,400. March was also a
weak month for the U.S. jobs report, so Ohio’s numbers may be following a
nationwide slowdown. Jobs in manufacturing, mining and logging,
financial activities and trade, transportation and utilities increased,
while other areas dropped by varying degrees.
Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls and Mayor Mark Mallory still support the streetcar project, touting its economic benefits to the city. Still, Qualls told CityBeat Wednesday that she wants to have a “very robust public conversation” about the project with the public and city officials to see how it can move forward.
On the two-year anniversary of his death, the lawsuit for David “Bones” Hebert has been expanded
to include the city of Cincinnati and three Cincinnati
Police officers. Since he was killed by
police in 2011, Bones has built a following that wants to bring what
they perceive as justice to his death.
A state representative announced he will run against
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman in 2016 because of Portman’s vote against a
federal gun control bill. State Rep. Bob Hagan wrote on Facebook,
”Senator Portman shows his lack of courage and testicular fortitude. The
NRA Owns him. I am declaring my candidacy for US Senate to run against
him in the next election. I will be his hair shirt for the next three
years.” A poll from The New York Times and CBS found about 92 percent of Americans support universal background checks, the major policy proposal in the gun control bill.
A new app allows Icelanders to make sure their hookups don’t qualify as accidental incest.

Researchers find that live music, played or sung, can help with the development of premature babies, Mick Jagger says no new Stones album, but Keith says, "Uh, yeah," and some in the media actually took time to report on boy band members/runners' non-injuries just hours after the Boston Marathon explosions.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

• Tuesday’s Enquirer abandoned its traditional timidity
and published bloody color images of victims of Boston Marathon
bombings. Good. I’m sure also there were images too ghastly for the
breakfast table, but the shift is welcome. The inside image of an
elderly runner knocked down by the blast and framed by Boston cops
running toward the explosion was another good decision. He collapsed as
the blast surge hit him in the midst of other runners. We saw that on
TV/online. It was one of the earliest viral images. NPR said the
78-year-old man stood and walked to the finish line, saying he hadn’t
run 26 miles to quit.
• HuffingtonPost.com quickly repeated this potential calumny: “Investigators
have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston
Marathon bombings, The (New York) Post has learned. Law enforcement sources said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.”
About the same time, Massachusetts and Boston officials were telling journalists they had no suspects.
I recall how authorities initially sought someone who
looked like an Arab after the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City
was bombed in 1995. How do I know? It was all over the news media. As
the current FBI website puts it, “Coming on the heels of the (first)
World Trade Center bombing in New York two years earlier, the media and
many Americans immediately assumed that the attack was the handiwork of
Middle Eastern terrorists.”
Two white non-Arab Americans were convicted of the
bombing. The only “Arab” link was murderer Timothy McVeigh’s military
service in the first Iraq invasion, Desert Storm, where he won a Bronze
Star. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists continued to weave elaborate links
between the Oklahoma City bombers and Arabs.
• Everyone with a microphone seems
to be telling us the investigation of the Boston bombings will be
complex and unhurried. Many recall how long it took to abandon suspicion
of security guard Richard Jewell as the Atlanta Olympics bomber. It
took two years to identify Eric Rudolph as the bomber and another five
to arrest him. False leads will abound and forensic evidence will be
sought, collected and analyzed. Some will be helpful, some will be
misleading. With so many journalists present, initial coverage largely
was self-correcting. The rumor of seven more bombs or a bomb at the JFK
library was quickly spiked. The story that local officials blew up a
third bomb lasted a little longer. That was half-correct: They blew up a
package/backpack but it was not a bomb. There were only two bombs as of
this writing.
Everyone with a microphone seems to be saying the Boston
bombing investigation will be complex and unhurried. Many recall how
long it took to abandon suspicion of security guard Richard Jewell as
the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber. False leads will abound and forensic
evidence will be sought, collected and analyzed. Some will be helpful,
some will be misleading.
• If bombers hoped to create terror, the Boston Marathon
was a smart choice: there would be lots of images from cell phones and
the news media. It fits my theory of 9/11: the initial 2001 attack on
the World Trade Center tower was timed to assure the news media would
get full coverage of the jetliner flying into the second tower.
• Moving on from bloodshed, Rachel Richardson’s Enquirer
story about dogs in the workplace was a smart story, especially part
about socialization being vital to a dog fitting in.
And she pushed my nostalgia button. My first job out of
college was night editing a daily paper in Italy. I bought a Belgian
Shepherd (Groenendael) pup and named him Loki
for the Norse trickster. His mother was a part-wolf/mountain shepherd's
companion and father was an Italian ex-Army K9. With long, silky black
coat, a plume of a tail, alert eyes and ears, Loki was an unbeatable
chick magnet.
His socialization comprised strolling Rome, riding and
waiting in my car, joining me in bars and restaurants, and lying under
my desk at the Rome Daily American at night when I was the only
journalist. I didn't know the breed is famous/infamous for one-person
loyalty and instinct to protect: person, possessions, etc.
Loki didn’t approve of anyone approaching my desk when I
was in the back shop where type was set, pages were composed and the
press run. Anyone else would bring him to his feet, ears back, shoulder
blades up, teeth bared . . . but silent. Even as a pup, he could be
menacing. “Lupo siberiano,” or Siberian wolf, was the Roman nickname for
the breed.
Night messengers who brought engraved zinc plates — photos
for every edition in that ancient era of hot type and flatbed press —
quickly learned to avoid the newsroom and come directly into the back
shop. Loki was a force to be accommodated.
Away from the office, he’d curl up on my Sunbeam Alpine’s
passenger seat and bite anyone who was silly enough to reach into the
car in hopes of a quick theft.
He rarely let go before I returned and that could create
Roman opera buffa. Loki’s victim typically threatened to call police
about my vicious dog and — without telling Loki to let go — I offered to
help by shouting for police. We never did call for police. When
released, the would-be thief unfailingly walked away, cursing me for
enticing him with an open sports car into what he hoped was a crime of
opportunity.
When I worked days, Loki stayed home nearby. His
socialization didn’t accommodate the chaos of a small, crowded newsroom
with strangers coming and going.
Again, thanks for the reminder: fun, smart and god help us, mindful of Enquirer watchdog obligations.
• As anticipated here, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is
following other Newhouse dailies by reducing home deliveries to three
days a week: Sunday and two days to be named later. The PD says it will
print seven days a week for street sales. It also plans to fire about a
third of its newsroom staff. It’s a sad demise of what long was Ohio’s
best daily.
• The Enquirer business section headline was “Survey:
Downtown seen as more positive.” That’s also what the story said, based
on what Downtown Cincinnati Inc. told the paper. The accompanying photo
showed people playing in Washington Park in Over-the-Rhine. People
feeling positive downtown just weren’t photogenic.
• Read Gina Kolata’s April 7 New York Times story on a new
understanding of the role of red meat in heart trouble. It’s among the
best story telling in a long time. It’s a complicated subject but she
draws us in with researchers sitting down to sizzling sirloin breakfast
“for the sake of science.” It gets even better as she explains that the
science involves “a little-studied chemical that is burped out by
bacteria . . . “ Talk about imagery. Send photos.
• NPR is killing its Monday-Thursday afternoon call-in
show, Talk of the Nation, and we’ll all be poorer for it. Talk of the
Nation involves civil, lengthy discussion of timely topics. NPR is
working with Boston’s WBUR to create a program for Talk’s 2-4 p.m. time
slot. NPR says member stations wanted a program more like Morning
Edition and All Things Considered in the afternoon and evening. Too bad.
Expect lots of canned (and cheaply produced) interviews that seem to be
the promise of the new show.
• Journalists should refuse to name sources to whom
they’ve promised confidentiality. The corollary, of course, is to ask
first whether we’re willing to serve time for contempt of court if we
reject a judge's demands that we break our word and name our source(s).
In that sense, we probably don’t think it will happen to us and almost
mindlessly promise confidentiality to encourage sources to talk to us.
So when there is a court confrontation, the refusenik
journalist typically is cast as the hero and the judge as a mindless
apparatchik and/or tool of the prosecutor. That’s too simple. Reporters
are free to ask their sources to release them from their promise of
confidentiality. Judges should compel testimony only when prosecutors
have used every other way to identify reporters’ sources and silence
could pervert justice. Judges are on the hot seat as much as reporters.
The latest unresolved contest involves Jana Winter who
quoted unnamed law enforcement personnel when she reported that Aurora, Colo., gunman James Holmes sent an incriminating notebook to his
psychiatrist before massacring moviegoers. FoxNews.com’s
Winter said the notebook was filled with violent notes and drawings.
Now that the apparently accurate information is out, I don’t see how the
sources’ identities matter to a fair trial if there ever is one.
Rather, I like what Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor
at the University of Maryland, told the New York Times: “If you
required reporters to disclose their sources every time there was a
minor leak in a high profile criminal case, the jails would be filled in
America with journalists.”
• London’s Daily Mail reports the auction of a log book
kept by the RAF navigator whose “bouncing bomb” breached a vital German
dam during World War II. The raid was portrayed in the film, The
Dambusters. The Daily Mail’s story was spoiled only by a photo of the
unique bomb being dropped by a twin-engine plane; Dambusters flew
four-engine Lancaster heavy bombers.
• Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is loathed to degrees that W and Obama cannot imagine. Her
death last week sparked national demonstrations of joy even as the
government and palace hoped that her almost-state funeral in London
could be protected from demonstrators. Haters danced in the street,
daubed “Rust in Hell” about the Iron Lady, and sang “Ding, Dong, the
Witch Is Dead.” That forced BBC to decide whether to play that song from
the
Wizard of Oz movie on BBC radio shows dedicated to hit songs or on news
programs about Thatcher’s life and death. The song reportedly became
No. 1 on iTunes before the funeral and it was headed for the top of the
pop charts, pushed by Thatcher haters. At last report, BBC’s director
general said only a 5-second snippet would be allowed on the main radio
channel. New to his job, he pissed off everyone.
• Patrice Lumumba was the Congo’s first prime minister
after Belgium granted independence to the huge, potentially wealthy and
criminally unprepared colony. He was murdered not long before I began
working on the Congo border in Northern Rhodesia. He already was a
martyr-hero of the Left when I studied African anthropology in London.
Lumumba’s abduction, torture and murder were popularly
assumed to be a CIA operation, working with Belgians, rebels in
copper-rich Katanga province, and others who coveted the Congo’s mineral
wealth and mines.
Now, a curious news story in London’s Telegraph says
Britain’s worldwide Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) engineered
Lumumba’s death. More curious is the weight it gives to a second-hand
source. It quotes Lord Lea of Crondall quoting Baroness
(Daphne) Park of Monmouth, who was the senior MI6 officer in the Congo
then, as saying she "organised it.”
Lord Lea told the Telegraph, "It so
happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park – we were
colleagues from opposite sides of the Lords – a few months before she
died in March 2010. She had been consul and first secretary in
Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, from 1959 to 1961, which in practice (this
was subsequently acknowledged) meant head of MI6 there. I mentioned the
uproar surrounding Lumumba's abduction and murder, and recalled the
theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. 'We did,' she
replied, 'I organised it.'"
The Telegraph said Lord Lea claimed
Baroness Park reasonably was concerned that Lumumba might be a communist
siding with Soviet Russia. After all, African and Asian
independence leaders like Lumumba, South Africa’s Mandela and others
often found their most active Cold War support mainly in Moscow and the
wider Communist movement.
Initially blaming the CIA wasn’t irrational. By Lumumba’s
death in 1961, the CIA had engineered the overthrow of elected
governments in Iran and Guatemala and botched the Bay of Pigs invasion
to topple Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Belgium apologized in 2002 for failing to prevent
Lumumba’s death. In 2006, the Telegraph said, “documents showed the CIA
had plotted to assassinate him but the plot was abandoned.”

On April 15, Cincinnatians focused their
attention on a nearly 400-year-old city 800 miles from us because, in
the grand scheme of things, that’s really not so far away. We watched, listened
and talked about what happened to hundreds of people at the finish line
of the world’s most famous marathon.

Two explosions at the Boston Marathon yesterday led to the deaths of at least three and injured at least 140 others,
with the deaths including an 8-year-old boy. So far, it is
unclear who carried out the bombings. Police said the two bombs
were set in trash cans, less than 100 yards apart, near the finish line
of the marathon. Officials said police also found two bombs in different
locations, but they were not set off. At least 134 entrants
from Greater Cincinnati were at the marathon, but none are believed to
be hurt, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The bombings were carried out on Patriots’ Day, a Massachusetts-based
holiday that commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution,
and tax day. They were the first major act of terrorism on U.S. soil
since Sept. 11, 2001.
Councilman Cecil Thomas is set to make a major
announcement today at 11:30 a.m. The speculation is that Thomas will
officially announce he’s appointing his wife Pamula Thomas to replace him on City Council — a
move he’s hinted at for a couple months now. Thomas is term limited
from running again in City Council, but appointing his wife to his seat
could give her some credibility and experience to run in November.
Federal sequestration, a series of across-the-board budget cuts at the federal level, is already having an effect on Cincinnati and Ohio,
with cuts taking place for education, housing and the environment. In
Cincinnati, the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency plans
to carry out $1 million in cuts by dropping 200 kids from the Head
Start program, which helps low-income families get their children into
preschool and other early education programs. Wendy Patton, a senior
project director at Policy Matters Ohio, says the cuts are only the “tip
of the iceberg.”
David Pepper, a Democrat who previously served on City
Council and the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners, announced
yesterday that he will run for state attorney general. “I have been traveling
the state for years now listening to working and middle class Ohioans
and it is clear they want a change, a new direction at all levels,”
Pepper said in a statement. “I’m running for Ohio Attorney General
because Ohioans deserve better.” In the statement, Pepper touted his
experience working with law enforcement in Cincinnati and Hamilton
County.
At least seven members of the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees are asking fellow member Stan Chesley to resign
after Chesley’s permanent disbarment by the Kentucky Supreme Court last
month. A letter to Chesley from his fellow board members cited the
Kentucky Supreme Court ruling, claiming he “engaged in conduct involving
dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”Greater Cincinnati housing permits increased by 41
percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati. The numbers are another sign the local economy is quickly recovering from the Great Recession.
Convergys plans to fill 1,000 work-at-home call jobs in 60 days.
DunnhumbyUSA is preparing for future growth in Cincinnati by building a new headquarters.
Solar panels may be used to make natural gas 20 percent more efficient and therefore pollute 20 percent less greenhouse gases.
Two new studies of mice and rat skin cells could be used to treat brain disease.